NES Classic Was Discontinued to “Focus on Other Areas”

Nintendo dropped a bomb out of nowhere last year when it announced that the NES would be returning in the form of the NES Classic Edition—a miniature replica of the over 30 year-old system that came bundled with 30 touched-up, HD-ready classic titles. The mini system was an insanely hot item when it launched at the reasonable price of $60. But, Nintendo did not expect it to become such a popular seller. It was already deemed as a ‘limited edition’ item, so not a lot of stock was initially produced.

Upon recognizing the huge demand for the NES Classic, Nintendo went ahead and boosted production for a few more months. It was still selling faster than it could be produced, which led to a lot of resellers (or ‘scalpers’) to buy up units and flip them on sites like eBay and Amazon for insanely marked-up prices.

The NES Classic Edition was officially discontinued a few months ago, which left a lot of consumers disgruntled seeing that the limited supply left a lot of folks out in the cold. The reason for the discontinuation despite the high popularity was because Nintendo wanted to “focus on other areas” (most likely to increase Switch production). This was mentioned by Nintendo of America’s Senior VP of Sales & Marketing, Doug Bowser during an interview with TechCrunch.

Bowser elaborated further on the situation with the NES Classic, saying that the company “learned a lot” from it. Here’s his full statement:

“We’ve learned a lot from the NES Classic. We’ve learned there’s a real passion for retro gaming. The NES Classic was originally intended to be a holiday item and obviously there was high demand. So we doubled down and continued to produce it as we went into the next quarter. But we decided we wanted to focus on other areas. So we’re not producing any more at this point. But we’ve learned a lot.”

Were you able to grab an NES Classic? If so, have you enjoyed it? Sound off below!

NES Classic Was Discontinued to “Focus on Other Areas” was last modified: June 17th, 2017 by A.K Rahming

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